Lord Samper's Library

As now seems to be the way for a Friday, I’m rounding the week off with a little short story action and once again, my ‘Best of Glen Cook’ collection has come to my rescue. I read ‘Bone Eaters’, back at the end of November , and was left wondering just what Midnight and her friends were up to after deserting the Company. I thought I was going to have to give ‘Port of Shadows’ another go (didn’t get on with it so well, last time I tried, so was a bit wary about this) but it turns out that the last story in the ‘Best of’ collection is ‘Chasing Midnight (The Dark Lord As A Teen)’ and it’s all about what happened next. So, when is a Black Company’ story not a ‘Black Company’ story? When they’re right on the periphery and the focus is on Midnight and her gang… The Black Company have taken coin to work in the city of Rue, fighting a war against the Dank. Within the city itself, Midnight and her gang look to avoid the attentions of their former employer while looking to fend for themselves ...

I’m in the office today which means that my bag was jammed full of laptop, and assorted paraphernalia, this morning. No room for the books that I should be reading then (and that pile seems to be growing…) but just enough room for a short story collection to dip in and out of whilst sat on the bus. I decided that ‘Operation Arcana’ hadn’t been out of the house for a while so it was way past time that it had a jaunt 😉 There are a whole load of stories, in ‘Operation Arcana’, that I still haven’t read (and it’s a book that’s been on my shelf for years now…) but it was six in the morning and I was at least an hour away from breakfast so in the end, I settled on the story that I bought the book for in the first place… What? I was tired 😉 I’ve been a fan of ‘The Black Company’ for years (although true to form, I still haven’t read ‘Port of Shadows’…) so picked up ‘Operation Arcana’, back in the day, when it looked like reading the odd short story here and there was the only way that I’d...